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ROY'S DRIVEL


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Hi Roy that rubber stuff looks to be better stuff to the rubber Crete, so will you just be having the rubber just as a track bed, sure open up to being used straight on the dirt you can build up grades and spirals like the real thing.

What's the plan will you build the track bed higher than ground level for storm water issues, you could start will going around the back yard first and head out around the house later, that is what I am planning with my layout is in stages, just about ready nail down track at the car port end of my layout, not fay in running the first test loco.

Weather is stable up here nice days, cloudy though rain coming in yesterday was 32 degrees in the sun , got a new weather station ,see how long this digital one will last, paid a bit more money for it, bargain, $300 retail price got it for $137 on eBay, after I bought it he put them back to that higher price.

Happy modelling from SEQLD, Tony

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  • 2 months later...

Well the saga of mum's mobility continues. She is once again in hospital in the rehab/physio ward and it seems that her left knee has for want of a better phrase, worn out. She has osteoarthritis in the left knee joint due to the last hip which as it aged slowly collapsed and put pressure on the knee joint with her cartilage being worn away until it's just bone on bone. She may have a knee replacement and that would make two artificial knees.

She has two doctors in the hospital one is full of hope and the other is what mum calls Doctor Doom and Gloom. This doctor has told her that we're going to put you into a nursing home somewhere in New South Wales. I saw this doctor and she told me that 'we have you mother's best interest at heart'. I told her 'no you don't you just want to be rid of her asap'. 'My mother is a human being not a number on your computer files'. The fighting continues.

But today my Dyson vacuum decided 'I'm not going to suck anymore'. My Dyson Vacuum is a DC01 and is over 15 years old. Many people would say 'oh well it's worn out', but not me. I decided to take it to bits and OMG there was loads of dust, fluff and general crud bunging up the airways where the fluff usually flows to the bin on the front.

Having cleaned it all out it now sucks like new. A workmate of mine his wife has a Dyson in fact her fourth as he says after a while all vacuum cleaners stop sucking and the motors burn out. When I said 'why don't you take it to bits and clean it out before the motor burns out'. Answer.'can't be bothered, easier to buy a new one'.

I have two vacuums the other is a Volta barrel vacuum that dad bought to vacuum out his car (Ford Focus 2002 model) but he never used it as shortly after he became permanently ill. So when he died I took it and use it to vacuum all three cars, my two and that same Focus which although mum no longer has a license, she keeps in case one of us needs it or we take her somewhere as my Falcon is low down as is my brothers car and she finds it hard to get in and out of them.

As the Reverend Peter Denny said to some bloke,'don't get old it's not fun'. Unfortunately unless you suicide you don't have any choice.

Today a steam loco went past the back hedge but I didn't film it as it had two diesels on the back so that the steam loco wasn't make sounds of Chuff! Chuff! Chuff! Chuff! but softly saying fuff fuff fuff fuff instead and the two Alco diesels at the back were roaring doing all the work.

I also phoned DCC Concepts in Western Australia and bought their "rolling road" with 12 rollers as I have Garratts.

I also asked the owner if the Power Base Plates would stand up to an outdoor environment, and what should I use to fix them to the base material. He suggested an exterior silicone glue, one of those that come in a large cartridge. He asked what code of rail I would be using (100) and he said that spacers are available for locos using code 100 track to bring the magnets closer together.

Roy.

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On a previous post in my drivel was our administrator wondering about 'bonking' at 5-6am.

Well there was a sort of Grumpy old Woman on the TV here but all Australian females. One of them said that you get home from work, your tired but you have housework to finish, dinner to make and serve, washing up afterwards, and ironing some washing. At the end you have a nice relaxing bath and watch a bit of TV before going to bed. You and your husband get into bed and you snuggle down dreaming of the wonderful land of nod you're about to enter.......and then his hand comes over and you think, oh no not tonight. :lol:

So 'bonking' first thing in the morning made not be a bad idea as being men there is usually one part of us that has a 'full head of steam' and is raring to go. :lol:

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well mum is now in the Hostel of the retirement village and settling in. My brother and I are clearing out her unit and discovering that mum and dad were hoarders.

Mum had antique furniture circa 1850's which is to go to the national trust.

Mum also had a Royal Standard 6 piece tea set which belonged to her mother but I'm going to keep that and will give it to my niece if and when she and her boyfriend get married. If I was to sell it here it wouldn't get more than 50 pounds. It's fine bone China with hand painted flowers on it.

Mum's car a 2002 Ford Focus has been offered to my niece for free. Oddly she wants to buy it but mum said no, you can have it for nothing. Well not quite nothing as my niece needs arrange insurance, registration and their is damage on the front right fender where mum hit the garage, the back of the left exterior mirror is cracked, theirs a dent in the left rear door and the windscreen washers don't work because a piece of plastic pipe is missing. The pump works but sprays water over the engine. Other than those things everything else works including the air conditioning. I recently put two new tyres on it due to two on their becoming very hard and the tread starting to separate from the tyre. My brother and I guess that those two tyres are original tyres and are 13 years old.

The local hospital told me to bring my mum down to them for a thyroid test at 7am!. I asked if my mum had requested a test and was told that the hospital where she was having rehab requested the test. I told the bossy bitch of a woman 'if you want mum there at that time you can arrange patient transport to take her down and bring her home. She snapped back 'no that's your job!'. I replied ' in that case she won't have the thyroid test'.

Once the unit is cleared out and life begins to return to normal I can think about having another garden railway

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Cleaning out one of mum's cupboards I came across a book I haven't see in years which is an American book called Gardening: The art of killing weeds and bugs to grow flowers and crops for animals and birds to eat.

It describes itself as a "Dictionary for Weed Pullers, Slug Crushers and backyard Botanists.

Take the insect Aphid: An insect which inphests gardens and makes gardeners phoam at the mouth, stamp their pheet, and utter phour letter words.

Rotary Lawn Mower: Gasoline powered metal detector used to locate misplaced trowels, shears and hose nozzels in tall grass. The machine indicates a "contact" by giving off a loud WHINNNNNNNG! sound, and then immediately stalling.

Pathway: In most gardens the shortest distance between two eyesores.

Nursery: The only place where money grows on trees.

Hardy: A plant is said to be hardy if it survives long enough in a nursery to be sold.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've been watching another video of an indoor railway in the UK a very large one and a trip on it from the "man at the back". It tells the story of the guard on a pick-up goods train interspersed with life in the early 1960's in the north east of England.

It made me think about life when I was a kid. Some say those were great times but were they really. I think we tend to look at the past through rose coloured glasses.

I was born in Melbourne Victoria Australia in 1962 (53 years ago yesterday to be precise) and my dad was moved by the company he worked for at that time (Legal and General) an insurance company to Sydney New South Wales. I have no memory of where I lived in Melbourne but can remember of the early times in Sydney.

My dad bought a new brick veneer house with a concrete tiled roof. It had three bedrooms and a double carport built as part of the house. We had an inside flush toilet and laundry. The house cost my dad in 1966 $17,000 which in those times was a huge amount of money.

The house was situated on a new housing estate called "Kingsdene" in the suburb of Carlingford. We had no railway line anywhere near us or either heavy or light industry. It was purely a residential suburb and still is.

In those time I went to Carlingford West Public School and later to Cumberland High School, both state schools. There was an exclusive private school near to where I lived called Kings School. But only the super wealthy sent their children there and still do.

My dad had a second hand 1964 Ford Cortina in butter yellow and as a kid I can remember sitting in the drivers seat on a Sunday morning when everyone was still in bed and pretending to drive. It was a safe suburb so no one locked their cars.

We(my brother and I) use to play in the bush round our house as for a short while we were the only family on our side of the estate.

We didn't have a TV so we had to amuse ourselves and trains were one way of doing that. British trains from Triang. My brother had Princess Elizabeth in BR green a tender drive model that dad had built from a kit possibly Airfix. It never seemed to run well. He also had a clockwork 0-6-0 tank. I had Albert Hall in GWR green and it was highly polished as all Great Western engines always were, or so I thought. I had a little 0-4-0 tank in blue called "Nelly". All early buildings were from the Airfix railway range (now sold by Dapol) Dad also built the non working models of Evening Star, The Rocket and City of Truro.

To say my parents were at that time on the poverty line would not be fair, but they were damn close to it. Our Ford Cortina had a brown interior (vinyl) with a 4 speed manual column gear shift and it ran on 4 cross ply retread tyres. There was no forced ventilation, no heater, certainly no air conditioning. In 1971 dad traded it in and bought a 1969 Ford Cortina 440. It was white with a blue vinyl interior but still no heater but a 2 speed fan. Neither car had a radio. Dad was also able to afford to fit radial tyres. For garden rubbish we use to take that to the local tip, which was at Kellyville. We use to load up the boot(trunk) of the car and go out along the Windsor Road. Just past the White Horse Restaurant the road speed increased to 55mph. That was awesome with my brother and I urging dad to go much faster, but he never did.

Dad had been offered a company car (a Falcon) but said no as accepting a company car would mean a drop in salary and dad needed the money. Mum and dad never gambled or smoked but they drank but only socially.

My first push bike was a metallic blue Malvern Star bought second hand from a local family. I use to ride that bike everywhere and no unlike today I didn't wear a helmet, shoulder, elbow or knee pads. I'd have been called a sissy if I had. I used to ride up Ferndale Avenue to where there was a vacant area of land where all the local boys would race their bike round and round the trees. If we fell off we got back on with bumps scratches and bruises. If you were in a lot of pain you could walk or ride slowly home and mum would fix you up. These days kids are taken for counseling and re-wrapped in more cotton wool.

If were weren't riding fast on the vacant block my school friend Paul and I would go into the main bush area and ride for miles along narrow bush tracks through creeks (streams) and over waterfalls. Sometimes in summer we'd strip off and have a swim in the pool at the base of the main big waterfall. All the kids use to do it boys and girls. There was no sexual attraction at that age it was just good fun. The water wasn't purified in any way and may have had bad chemicals in it but we used to swim in it not drink it.

In 1976 dad bought a new car a VW Golf LS which had a heater and 3 speed fan. A tachometer and a speedometer in KPH. In those days VW's were made in Germany....all of them. The golf still didn't have a radio although there was a space for it as dad never liked having music playing whilst he was driving. The space for the radio was where dad kept his sunglasses. The car also came with a clock and bucket front seats which reclined. I learnt to drive on that car and when driving at 100kph (60mph) the tachometer pointer needle would bounce between 4 and 5,000rpm. Dad said it was going through the sound barrier and once you hit 120kph (75mph) the pointer needle would be steady.

Dad kept that car for 14 years but sold it when he and mum bought a caravan for their trip around Australia which took them a whole year to do. In it's old age the golf started to leak coolant. Mum said she (the car) had become incontinent in her old age.

Where we lived on the Kingsdene Estate we where on a slight rise and down the bottom were located some shops. I remember very early on buying for mum a loaf of Buttercup sliced brown bread (the word wholemeal hadn't been invented) and it cost just 13c or 5.5p.

Mum had a wooden ironing board which had a bed sheet folded into several thicknesses and pinned to it with drawing pins. Her iron was a dry one only as dad didn't trust steam irons. Electricity and water in such close proximity. So mum had an old piece of cloth which she used to lay over the cloths and drop water in droplets from her fingers. This used to steam like blazes and get the wrinkles out of cloths especially jeans.

After a number of years using this method mum finally put her foot down and insisted on having a steam iron. Dad bought one but he was never really convinced that it was safe.

We went on holidays to other states mainly Queensland and Victoria. Of course every time we went to Victoria we had to ride on "Puffing Billy". Later dad hired a motor home and we went to South Australia It was a big motor home complete with shower and chemical toilet. All I can remember was that the previous people had split milk onto the shag pile carpet so the inside stank rotten. The bathroom cubicle was full of red dust. Mum actually got down on her hands and knees (not easy with a bad hip) and scrubbed the carpet and got it clean to get the stink out of it. She also bleached the bathroom and got that spotless. They gave the motor home back in a far cleaner state than when they first picked it up and dad got a sizable chunk of the hire fee refunded. The owner and his wife were gob smacked at how clean the interior and exterior was. The motor home sat on a Toyota Dyna light truck chassis and was under powered for the job. But the owner said that too many higher powered motor homes had tipped over due to the higher speeds people were able to go. They forgot about the high centre of gravity when going round corners.

All the years of dad's driving he was a member of the NRMA or National Roads and Motorist Association and eventually became a gold member. I too am a gold member now which is attained after 25 years of continuous membership. Other states in Australia have Motorist Associations too and look after members from other states.

In 1991 dad bought his first Falcon a 1989 station wagon which he fitted with a Heyman Reece tow bar for towing the caravan. That tow bar places the weight of the caravan on all four wheels not just the rear two. Mum learnt to drive at my insistence due to the fact that they would be traveling to some remote areas and if dad fell ill they would be stuck. There were no mobile phones in those days and even today a mobile phone doesn't work in remote areas. You need a satellite phone and they are very expensive.

At one point they had a flat tyre on the Falcon and a local bloke said he would take the flat tyre to the next town and give it to some bloke at his tyre shop to fix. Dad without a second thought handed over the tyre and this bloke just drove away towards the horizon. 120 km up the road dad found the tyre shop and the tyre had been fixed as promised.

Mum got her license before the went away on the big trip so she was on her "P's". In South Australia she was unsure if she could drive on her "P's" towing a caravan and was informed by the local police that yes she could do that. Mum said to them that in NSW it was illegal for a person on "P's" to drive towing a caravan. The police officer said to her ' well you can do that here because this is a civilised state.

My first car was a 1981 Suzuki Hatch 800cc in lime green. I had my first car accident in it when I was too busy perving on a blonde girl on the footpath and ran into the back of a Valiant (Chrysler) Charger. When the bloke who was driving went to get out of his car his wife wanted to know why he was getting out. When he told he that they'd been run into she replied 'well I didn't feel a bump'. There wasn't a mark on the Charger but the front end of my car was wrecked. Chargers were built like battle tanks.

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  • 1 month later...

I sympathize with you with your mother and father, My father is the last of 5 brothers, and now needs a walker to get around. Luckily My two sisters, still live in the area (near Linlithgow) so they and their children do the ferrying around as neither of my parents learnt to drive, public transport has been massively cut and the hills in the area are very steep..

I was nearly born in Australia, but my father ended up staying in the RAF so we didn't go. Two of his brothers went in the 1960s, one had been an Air traffic controller in the RAF the other had been in an early version of the Troggs band, both carried on with similar jobs out there.

My other hobby is sailing and I used to sail with a lady who didn't start till she was 59, I joined her sailing when she was 67 we won 10 trophies in the first year, when she was 72 she had her hips replaced, the phisio showed her how to do some exercises, when she went back she remembered to ask him how many repetitions, he said three of each, she had been doing .... 60!! we were sailing again together in three months, we won more trophies. Sadly she had to give up to look after her husband when she was 75 he has MS.

Oh we used to sail http://www.yeomankinsman.org.uk/

I'm in the back of the boat on the right as you look at it in the picture on the front cover, the guy you can see owned the boat and we raced together after she had retired.

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  • 1 month later...

Well I had an eye test today which involved all the usual procedures. I even got the eye doctor to give me a photocopy of the photo he took of the back of my eyes. Did you know they can tell if you have high blood pressure and if you have diabetes. With high blood pressure the tiny veins ooze blood and with diabetes they are broken.

Here's a photo of my two eyes.

I should add that the dull red spot in the middle of both photos is my macula. That is how a good macula is suppose to look.

roy1.jpg

 

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The optometrist got me to look at a small flashing light which was in this machine but appeared to be outside it. Holding nice and still and concentrating on this flashing light he fires the machine which takes a flash bulb picture. They do one eye at a time. All up the check up plus the new multi focal glasses was going to cost $700.00 but with my private health rebate and the public hospital chipping in some money it only cost $220.00.

As for living on carrots well not really I like carrots but the photos to me look like some weird deep sea creature from the BBC natural history unit which did a DVD called Blue Planet.

I just don't go for the real sugary drinks like V or Red Bull and I haven't had a Coke for years. V and Red Bull are like having a cup of tea with 12 teaspoon of sugar. I only have Maccas or other take away food rarely, usually if I'm on holidays and away in a strange town and all the cafes are over crowded. I don't like crowds.

One of the motels I stayed in at Ballarat had a sign up reading of an on premises a la carte restaurant. On going inside I was told that the kitchen was being pulled out and that breakfast in the morning was continental style. The woman said she'd rather I didn't order a full English breakfast as she didn't like cooking. This was a 4 1/2 star motel. I wondered who she got on her back for to earn that rating from. In those places I "nick" the soap and little bottles of shampoo and conditioner. They also had little cartons of complimentary long life milk and I always take my own coffee and a thermos so I swiped the milk too.

At this place I had booked two nights but after the first night I left my main suitcase in the room and got a number of text messages on my mobile. When I returned to the motel my suitcase was in the reception and this woman said that I'd forgotten it. When I told her I'd booked for two nights she said that only one night had been booked.

The best motel I stayed in was in Bendigo a Best Western motel with an onsite restaurant with wonderful fresh mouthwatering food.

One of the deserts I had was a fresh fruit salad and the fruit was fresh. Whenever I see "fresh fruit salad" on a menu I have a slight chuckle to myself. Thinking of Faulty Towers, 'My wife has decided not to have the fresh fruit salad'. 'Oh that's a real pity chef's just opened the tin'.

When I go on holidays in Australia I stay in motels. Most country town have a large selection of motels so you are spoilt for choice.

But I always take three essentials 1. my own pillow. 2. my own coffee and 3. my own marmalade. The Kraft Foods strawberry or raspberry jam is ok but their orange marmalade tastes nothing like any marmalade I've ever bought in a supermarket. It's almost a marmalade jelly.

In the UK I stay in pubs because they have so few motels.

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As a diabetic in the UK eye tests are free, my single vision glasses (reading) are about £75. varifocals can range from about £100 to £300 or to silly prices if you go designer. Luckily my eyes are of a standard type not needing special lenses. So I have my good glasses in the house to read books (I don't watch much TV) but scattered around the railway shed, workshop, the car and my drawer at work are pairs of cheap £2 glasses as I break them easily.

The photo machine itself sounds similar to the UK ones.

We don't have motels as such but most hotels have car parking, and at that end of the market Travelodge have 500 hotels and Premier Inn have 700.

In days gone past when I spent many hours on the motorways of the UK I had a large collection of the tiny soaps and shower gels etc all gone now.

Being diabetic and allergic to anaesthetics and highly reactive to caffeine a full fat coke or worse a red bull could put me in hospital.!!!

I have a exceedingly low opinion of Kraft foods, many are packed with cheap fillers, their "cheese slices" are only about 50% cheese. Their Worcester sauce is based on soya and nothing like the real thing. Their Horse radish tastes like industrial mayonnaise waved vaguely near a horseradish.

Sadly they are already corrupting cadburys chocolate.

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  • 8 months later...

Well it's been well over 6 months since I put anything into my drivel thread.

With mum nicely settled into the assisted living establishment I'm now doing battle with my employer. No not over work but in trying with no success to get them to approve a large outbuilding. Not only will it have a model railway in it and hopefully lines leading out into the garden but it will also have the provision to install cooking and wash facilities in it too. The reason being that we are now the most expensive country in the world to live in. Many young people are just continuing to live at home with mum and dad. They haven't a hope of ever affording the own home what with houses built in the 1970's costing $50,000 to buy then and today those same houses selling for 1.5 to $2,000,000. I thought it was bad when a bloke I knew paid $800,000 for his house near to where I live. I paid $38,000 for my house 35 years ago and it's now worth close to $600,000. Just ridiculous.

My employer insists that I want the outbuilding for a business use and tells me that my land is not zoned for industrial use. I've told them repeatedly that it's for a model railway but they won't or don't want to know. Some mates have said 'to hell with the council just go ahead an have your outbuilding constructed'. But I have no intention of winding up in court to face the music.

I want to have somewhere for the trains to run under cover at the end of a running day as putting stock on the track and then having to take stock off is a pain in the butt. I also want to be able to run trains when it's raining although that will only be round the inside of the shed. You could say (and you probably will) that I want the best of both worlds an indoor and outdoor layout.

The outdoor part would have 4 running lines and no points whatsoever. No need to worry about trains rear ending each other. The railway will be low level in the garden with the garden beds brought up to near the height of the railway. Stone retaining walls will flank both sides of the railway with enough room so if a train does derail the stock doesn't get damaged by the stone walling. The base to which the track will be fixed to will be the previously mentioned rubber granules held together by the binder.

I want the railway to pass through the outbuilding either in one end and out the other or to come into the outbuilding run round and exit the outbuilding opposite to where it came in. In other words to run round the inside of building in a large "U".

There is a multi level railway in Northern Ireland which a bloke has built into his garage. I'd like to try and do something similar to that.

Roy.

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Hi Roy good news you are planning a new railway and involving a shed, that means if it is raining you could run a train indoors magic stuff, yeah it is a sticky business tying to get the go head from a council to build a shed depending where the council is,, it is crazy when you said it is for a hobby and not a business, may be because they seam to think you putting in pluming and a cooking area.

There is a new guy on the forum that is planning the same as you are but he is using his train room and running the trains into the garden, he lives in Germany Thomas1.

Have to agree on the jump of house prices, we were looking at houses in the mid 80's and they were selling for $26,000 now double that, lost the interest years ago when they wouldn't take my wife's wage now they do, my son is 30 and he is still at home. No way we will put him into independent living, some of the storied you hear and it still is going on in nursing homes the treatment of the older people, we will keep looking after him till he does pass away, any time now as he depends on permeant ventilation.

I am luck we have a big pergola we put up in the 90'es with the car port is the nearly the full length of the house, still open to weather, would like to close it in, with the layout if it does rain I am designing the layout so I can put a couple of modules together and the curved sections are designed to do just that and run a train

Oh yeah I am lucky enough to be coming down to visit the Canberra war museum have a great Uncle in the WW1 section wall , staying in Canberra over night and traveling to Sydney by train so I can visit Sydney central and take those missing pics and some measurements mainly of the clock tower.

Do you know the height of the double deck buses as I am trying to work out the height of the road level to the first level, I think it is higher than 4 inches as it tapers up from road level to the entrance of the underground platforms of Sydney Central. To finish the add adventure off going to the airport by train first rid on a double deck train, wont have enough time to meet you, going in the first week of October.

Looking froward to see some plans of your layout.

Tony from QLD

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Hi Rony, hi Tony.

So the house prices became higher about factor 10 to 15 in Australia the last 30years?

Wow.....

...beside some well doing areas in cities like Munich or Berlin the house prices here have only doupled to tripled over the last 25 to 30years.

But we had also much higher prices than yours 30 years ago.

And they differ much between regions.

Just going from Ludwigshafen, were I live, to Mannheim, which is just opposite to Ludwigshafen on the river Rhine will double the price.

Moving 35km beyond Mannheim to Heidelberg and the prices are five times higher.

35km in the other direction and they are halved...

...but I think at all to hear german house prices will cause heart attacks to you aussie guys... :lol::lol:

Cordialement

Thomas

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  • 4 weeks later...
TheQ said:

Being diabetic and allergic to anaesthetics and highly reactive to caffeine a full fat coke or worse a red bull could put me in hospital.!!!

I have a exceedingly low opinion of Kraft foods, many are packed with cheap fillers, their "cheese slices" are only about 50% cheese. Their Worcester sauce is based on soya and nothing like the real thing. Their Horse radish tastes like industrial mayonnaise waved vaguely near a horseradish.

Sadly they are already corrupting cadburys chocolate.

We had in our local town a baker who used to make his own fruit loaf. There's a church next door and mum always reckoned he was up the church steeple when he added the fruit to the dough mixture as there was so little fruit in the loaf.

When I sliced my finger on my garden shredder and I was in hospital there was a huge girl who was a diabetic in a bed opposite me. It was a warm day and so she decided to have a ice cold drink. She consumed in one go 6 litres of full strength Cocoa Cola or three 2litre plastic bottles. Naturally being a diabetic she overdosed on sugar to blazes. Yes it nearly killed her and she knew she was not allowed to have Cocoa Cola. She was upset that the nursing staff were none too sympathetic towards her. So she tried me. I gave her the same reaction she got from the nursing staff. One of the nurses told me (quietly) that she was often in there for overdosing on sugar and that one day the ambulance will be too late in getting to her.

Kraft Foods is an American company and when Top Gear did their Southern US special when they drove from Florida to Louisiana they stopped at a service station where they bought sandwiches. One of the ingredients was "simulated American cheese". Ohhh Yuuukkkk.

Your horseradish that tasted like industrial mayonnaise waved vaguely near a horseradish, reminds me of a burger I had at a pub at Oundle near Peterborough. The onion wasn't cooked and had only been waved near the heat. The most unusual burger I've ever had. Two buns, one ultra thin slab of mince meat and cold onions. Then a side plate with two tomato quarters, to cucumber slices and a handful of lettuce.

Whereas out here it's a bottom bun toasted then layers staring with lettuce, a slice of tomato, a slice of beetroot, then the beef mince with cooked onions on top of the mince followed by your choice of tomato or bbq sauce and the other toasted bun on top. A full works burger adds bacon, a fried egg (not runny) a slice of chedder cheese, and a slice of pineapple.

I had an egg sandwich at the West Somerset Railway and when bit into the egg it ran out just missing me and went over the platform. Here egg sandwiches have the egg hard boiled and mixed with mayonnaise plain or curried.

Roy.

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Sounds like you had a fried egg sandwich not an egg sandwich (chopped egg and mayo)

As to house prices if I had bought a house in 1980 near where I live now ( coastal Norfolk ) they were about £14,000 for a small 2up 2down.

I eventually bought this our second home for ,£115,000 in 1999 (3 bed room detached with 1.5 acres of garden)

It's now worth around £300,000.

I take it your employer is the local council? Otherwise i can't quite work out what your employer would have to do with building control.

I assume your planning laws mean you need permission for any buildings?

In the UK you build up to 30 square meters floor area, 3 meters high flat roof or 4 meters pitched roof. With out permission providing you are are not in a National park or conservation area ( there are other limitations but too complicated for here)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Bad news my YouTube account has been hacked so all the videos I had have now gone. I'm in two minds whether to rejoin YouTube it seems to be going the same way as Facebook. Facebook to me is very, "look at me! look at me! I'm so much better than any of you!" and "I had a cup of coffee today and I need to tell everybody!". YouTube seems to be going the same way. I had one guy who persistently kept asking for a video I had to be put onto DVD and sent to him. He said his intentions were honorable but I just refused. With a copy of the footage on DVD he could have made a thousand copies and sold them to profit himself. The video in question was the Railscene Railscale "Bromford and High Peak Railway" in 7mm gauge. It was built by the late Ronny Hoare ( the Ferrari importer). The layout is now dismantled but in storage somewhere. All the locos and stock were sold off.

I just uploaded it to share it. None of my videos were monetised due to me not wanting to make money out of other peoples efforts. Besides monetising videos only really works if one had on average several thousand views per video, and that was never me. If videos did appear with ads on them then those ads were for people with music on the DVD's and if they wanted to make money from the efforts, then sure go right ahead.

Others say put a "water mark" on your videos to stop piracy but that's no good either, for people can skillfully erase your "water mark" put their own "water mark" on your video and claim it as their own.

I never saw the ads as I have "adblocker+ installed on my browser so all the ads on videos on YouTube are blocked. Even Vevo music videos which have loads of ads in them are blocked by this add on. I also have anti third party tracking as well. Microsoft told Firefox to disable that add on but Firefox refused point blank. Did you know that Firefox is one of the few that refuse to report the online activities to US authorities such as the CIA, NSA and FBI. They believe in a free and open web.

Cheer, Roy.

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  • 2 months later...

I recently posted a video in the "Buffet" section of the forum. To do that I had to rejoin YouTube but I haven't uploaded anything. On the home front I'm busier than ever with work and family. Heaven only knows when I'll get time to start on the next railway.

It's summer now and hot today with the temperature going past 40 degrees.

I recently bought a book not on railways but with the title Ford Australia The Cars and the People that Built Them. It's a great read for anyone interest in industrial history. Ford Australia had two plants in Victoria. One at Geelong and the other at Broadmedows. A rail spur was constructed off the mainline at Geelong into the assembly plant. Victorian Railways said it would take them approximately five years to construct the spur line. So Ford built it instead....in less than three months.

When Ford was considering buying the land to build the Broadmedows assembly plant they had to ask Ford US if they could. A typo error put the distance between the two plants at 4.5 miles when in reality it was 45 miles.

Everything that Ford Australia wanted to do that had to go "cap in hand" to Ford US. In 1981 the xD Falcon sedan was released. Ford Aust had to ask Ford US if they could design and build the car. So they went to Dearborn US with a stack of folders measuring about one foot in height. The "guys" at Ford US didn't want to look through all those folders on the specs of the car and just agreed to the project. Just as well really because only one or two folders actually contained information on the xD Falcon. All the other folders were full of old pages from old telephone directories.

Who remembers the old TV sitcom "To the Manor Born" and the episode where Audrey is trying to save the local station. The BR men show up to the local community meeting with a thin folder on the line. The head man berates the younger man saying that he should have stacks of bumph even if it only old pages from a telephone directory. It gives you authority. In the meeting Audrey produces the "Charter" setting out the terms whereby the railway had bought the land from her family. At the end of the meeting Audrey's friend Marjorie wanted to know where Audrey had gotten the "Charter" from. Audrey told her that it wasn't the "Charter" just some old pages from a telephone directory.

Besides the Falcon there were other cars in the Fairlane and the LTD. One LTD model in the mid 70's was the "Silver Monarch" a huge car and all in silver, vinyl roof included. It looked horrible and some at Ford Australia doubted it would sell at all. It did sell and the sales manager for Ford Australia remarked "never doubt the bad taste of the buying public".

In New South Wales at the Homebush Assembly plant parts were being stolen from the spare parts section. A "sting" operation was set up to catch the culprits. It ran for a week and naturally the shift manager and the security guard had to know about it. The "sting" operation never caught the culprits but they were caught in due course. The Culprits were, the shift manager and the security guard.

Another employee at the Geelong Assembly plant was an Olympic standard gymnast who got tired of walking across the floor from one area to another so he shimmied up the RSJ support girders and swung through the roof trusses and then shimmied down another girder. He was told not to do it on numerous occasions but he still did and eventually he was told that a ladder had to be secured top and bottom to be safe to climb. So to put a ladder in place he shimmied up a girder and tied the top of the ladder to a bearer and then shimmied down another girder and tied the ladder securely at it's base. He then climbed the ladder and swung through the roof trusses as normal. The ladder didn't last long and he went back to shimmying up the girders again. He never had an accident.

The unions of course played a role and with Ford Australia they tried very hard to work with the company rather than against Ford. One of the schemes was accident insurance and one employee hadn't joined because although he could read he couldn't write so he couldn't fill out the application form. The Union official filled the form in for him and the employee signed as best he could. This was in the early 1950's. A few weeks later this same employee was backing his car out of his driveway and a truck hit his car killing him instantly. The union paid his widow 1,000 pounds so that she and her three children wouldn't be destitute. A thousand pounds isn't much these days but in the early 50's it was a huge sum for ordinary people.

One further thing a merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all.

Roy.

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